Chapter Nineteen: Ashes Don’t Lie

Silas’s POV – Crescent Moon Territory

He shouldn’t have come alone.

But trust was a luxury he didn’t have anymore.

Silas crept through the overgrown courtyard of the old Crescent ancestral home, his father’s house. The moonlight made every cracked stone look like a ghost’s jawbone.

He hadn’t been here since the funeral.

Correction Since the cover-up.

His father hadn’t died in battle like they said.

There was no blood on the blades.

There was poison in his wine.

Silas found the broken cellar door exactly where he remembered it. The scent of dust, rot, and something older curled into his lungs.

Then he saw it.

Carved into the wall in dried blood

“Ashes don’t lie.”

Below it, the crest again his family’s. With one corner cut clean, like something or someone has intentionally removed.

Silas stepped back.

This wasn’t just a warning.

It was a message.

Someone had erased part of his family from the record.

But who?

And why?

Ethan’s POV – Red Moon Borders

He arrived just before dawn.

Fury burning under his skin.

Silas was gone.

Vanished in the night, like smoke slipping between fingers.

Arden had tracked his scent straight to the Crescent border.

“Why would he go alone?” Arden asked, breath sharp in the cold.

“Because he doesn’t trust anyone,” Ethan said. “And maybe he’s right.”

Then he crossed into Crescent territory without waiting.

He didn’t care about treaties anymore.

He cared about Silas.

Nina’s POV – Crescent Hall

“Tonight,” Elder Myra whispered. “They’ll meet in the ruins.”

Nina laced her fingers over her stomach, calm as glass.

“And you’re sure Crescent loyalists will take the bait?”

Myra nodded. “Once they believe Ethan crossed to assassinate Silas… the packs will turn on each other. You’ll be the one standing in the ashes.”

Nina smiled.

“Good. Then let them burn.”

Silas’s POV – Crescent Ruins

He felt him before he saw him.

That bondrestored, raw, alive buzzed faintly under his skin as Ethan stepped out from the treeline.

“You’re bleeding,” Ethan said.

Silas looked down. The cellar door had left splinters in his palm.

“You tracked me?”

“You disappeared.”

Silas turned away. “You wouldn’t understand.”

Ethan stepped closer. “Then make me.”

Silas’s voice cracked. “They erased someone from our bloodline. My father was betrayed by our own. And they tried to pin it on you, on this treaty, on us.”

Ethan was quiet for a beat.

Then “Then we find them. Together.”

Silas looked at him, eyes filled with fire and fear.

“You’re not afraid of what we’ll find?”

Ethan stepped even closer.

“I’m only afraid of losing you.”

Elsewhere

In the shadows of the Crescent forest, the trap was being set.

Nina's spies were already in position.

And Elder Myra smiled as she placed a blood-marked scroll onto the ruins' altar.

A fake death decree.

Signed by Ethan’s hand.

Forged, of course.

But the loyalists wouldn’t care.

They’d see it.

And they’d believe Ethan came to kill Silas under the guise of love.

Just like the first betrayal that tore the packs apart.

Because when history repeats, it doesn’t whisper

It screams in blood.